Vast amounts of nuts are conventionally processed by cracking a nut shell to expose the nut meat followed by separating the cracked shell or hull from the nut meat. Nut cracking operations must be fastidiously controlled and typically require elaborate and expensive equipment, must commonly conducted by large manufacturing operations requiring substantial capital expenditures. Nut cracking is a delicate procedure since “over-cracking” can undesirably disintegrate or fragment the whole nut into fragmented pieces or splits while under-cracking makes it most difficult to cleanly separate the hull fragments from the nut meat.
Several different nut cracking systems exist, ranging from an impacting hammer or ram for cracking the whole nut against an anvil or stationary surface, compressing whole nuts between rollers to centrifugally impacting machines which shatter the whole nut against a circumscribing impacting ring. The impact ring cracking systems customarily rely upon a centrifugal impeller typically equipped with a center whole nut feed and radially extending tubes or conduits which conduct uncracked nuts or whole nuts through an outer peripheral impeller outlet which centrifugally casts the whole nuts against an impacting ring which cracks or fractures the outer hull or shell of the nut.
Irrespective of which system is used to crack or dehull whole nuts, considerable difficulty is encountered in effectively fracturing the hull sufficiently so as to expose the nut meat for expeditious separation without further fracturing the nut meat into a number of undesirable smaller nut meat pieces. Conversely, the cracking force must also be sufficient so as to cause effective separation of the hull from the nut meat. Inappropriate nut cracking forces can lead to excessive “splits” or fragmentation which are commercially undesirable or conversely to an incomplete separation of the hull from the nut meat which creates added processing costs to separate and potential injury or damage to the nut meat.
The need to separate the hulls, nut meat and partially dehulled nut meats from one another contributes added expenses to the manufacture of nut meats. Commonly used mechanical separations techniques for separating the shell or hull from the nut meat such as by vibratory and/or air extraction methods tend to not only complicate the separation but become even more complex when the nut cracking leads to incomplete cracking or excessive nut meat breakage. This can result in a need to excessively rely upon labor intensive or hand separation techniques to produce the desired end product. Such extended manufacturing conditions can result in substantial damage to the desired nut meats product. If the nut meat manufacturers were able to more accurately control the manner in which the nut hull is cracked, there would then exist an opportunity to optimize the production of intact whole nut meats and the separation of the nut hulls therefrom. A nut cracking process which would lead to a simultaneous separation of the nut meat from the nut hull would be particularly beneficial to the manufacturers of nut meats.
In view of the aforementioned, there exists a need for a compact and cost effective nut cracking system affording greater efficacy in the dehulling of a nut hull from the nut meat. This would be especially beneficial if the nut cracking system would provide the nut meat in an intact form with nominal splitting or fracturing of the whole nut meat into smaller fragments. Further benefits would arise in nut meat manufacture if there exited a more effective method for separating the nut meat from the hull. It would be further beneficial if the nut cracking system could effectuate simultaneous separation of the nut hull from the nut meat. Since conventional nut cracking plants necessarily rely upon relatively complex and costly equipment, there would exist a benefit for nut growers and localized smaller processing plants, if the nut meat processing plants would be compactly equipped with more affordable but highly effective nut cracking and separation equipment so as to permit processing at or near the growing site.